


Empty within

by lord_R2_D2 (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Death, Hux has functioning tear ducts, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Pain, They work perfectly, accidental murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:59:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7617217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/lord_R2_D2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia unwittingly helps in the killing of her grandchild, Hux cries, and Kylo Ren loses his shit. (Snoke laughs evilly)</p><p>Or, how Skywalker genes screw up everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty within

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story, there are dead babies and bad things happen. Read at your own mental risk ;)

It happens too quickly for a human mind to follow, let alone process. One moment they're walking under snow-dusted trees, shivering in sub-zero temperatures; and before Leia can blink, a small body is crumpled onto the frozen ground before them, copper hair glinting in the dying light of Starkiller Base.

The Resistance soldier beside her lowers his blaster slowly, durasteel barrel still glowing. Leia looks it over to check that it’s on stun, then cautiously approaches the fallen General. From what they’d gathered through sleeper agents, defected troopers, and even cantina rumours, Hux is one hell of a sneaky bastard. It’d just be like him to fake unconsciousness, before shooting her in the face with a concealed blaster when she is three steps away.

Still, it seems that the man is well and truly knocked out. Leia grabs a pair of standard-issue cuffs, fastening it behind his back, slender wrists barely restrained by titanium rings. They’re one-size fits all, with the varied species the Resistance captures having equally varied sizes. At least the hidden weapons can be removed from the enemy General’s person- two small officer pistols, a sharp dagger in his left boot, and a sticky and probably poisonous substance inside an insignia badge.

The process takes under a minute to complete, and once they’re done, Leia reaches out with the Force to rouse his consciousness awake. Her manipulation of that energy may not be on par with full-fledged Jedi, but she does have some tricks up her sleeve.

Minutes pass in the terror-filled hurry back to the shuttle. Leia had foolishly ventured out hoping to meet her son, but the quaking ground of a dying planet is no place to seek wayward children. Nor, as it seemed, extremely high-ranking members of the First Order. She won’t look a gift nerf in the mouth, though, and General Hux’s capture is sure to merit valuable information. And justice, she thinks darkly, remembering a red haze of light, of sudden disintegration, of children playing in their garden and obliterated in a heartbeat. Hux will answer for the Hosnian System.

Now, though, is the struggle to get off the planet, to force ailing limbs into frenzied action, to reach the shuttle in time- they make it into hyperspace just before the Starkiller’s core implodes, scattering debris for a two-hundred-mile radius. In the cramped supply shuttle, the superweapon’s controller flinches ever so slightly, translucent eyelashes fluttering slowly. Jeering maliciously, the fuzzy pink Resistance soldier slaps the captive man, leaving behind a bright-red imprint on pallid skin. Leia herself flinches, but says nothing, waiting for the shuttle autopilot to bring them home, and Hux, to his fate.

*

Ever since he was jolted back into consciousness by Organa’s strange mental arts, Hux has been painfully aware of a low, burning pain in his lower abdomen. It’s too mild and early to be practice contractions, though he supposes that a few painkillers won’t be amiss. He can just imagine the chalky, bitter taste of the regulation pills he’d taken regularly, when the sleep deprivation, work stress from managing an emotional man-child, or being in charge of nearly eighty thousand being s on a two-kilometer long ship became too much. He thinks about how the thin blister pack would crumple in his hands as pure relief overtook his senses, leaving him light-headed and slightly giddy. But for the time being, he is a prisoner of the kriffing Resistance, and seriously doubts if they care about pain medication for the currently most hated man in the galaxy. Hux grits his teeth and leans against the cold metal wall, the loose cuffs uncomfortably digging into his spine.

When the shuttle lands jerkily on the soft ground of D’ Qar, it is all he can manage to keep from whimpering, as a white-hot agony rips through his stomach, and stays there. Breathing quickly through his nose, Hux tries to shift positions in a futile effort to alleviate it, and realizes that there’s an unpleasant patch of dried something on the back of his pants, causing the cloth to stickily adhere to bare skin. It probably isn’t very obvious, black being a good colour to hide all sorts of stains, but he’s suddenly glad that they’d let him keep the greatcoat, and wraps it closer around himself.

If simply arriving at the Resistance base was bad enough, walking on it is even worse. Hux is somehow able to move with a semblance of normality towards a shabby concrete bunker, where apparently his interrogation will take place. The area, badly paved with cement, is swarming with people, most dressed in the lurid orange outfits favored by the First Order’s worst trouble-makers. Or enemies of what was once the ruthless militant fringe group, anyway. The crowd parts as Organa marches through them, Hux and the soldier dragging him along in tow, and their faces are all the same; mocking and triumphant. Even a little orange droid gives him the finger with a lighter.

He can’t pay attention to that anyway, every wobbly step a tortuous ordeal, and when they finally reach the bunker he feels like crying with relief. That’s when Organa looks at him with that disgusting pity in her eyes, and suggests that the interrogation wait till the next day, first thing in the morning. Hux can’t help but nod furiously at that, ignoring the scandalized look the pink-eyed soldier gives her, and concentrates on thinking _yes yes yes_. It seems that Organa can read his mind, and orders the soldier to take him to cell block E.

The roughly three hundred meters to his cell take an eternity to cross. With each leaden, agonizing step, his ability to cope with the pain erodes away. On the way there he throws up, a disgusting mess that splatters the front of his boots and most of the grass, and he swallows the bile burning at the back of his throat. The soldier didn’t even stop walking, fuzzy antenna bobbing slightly in the distance, and Hux never felt greater revulsion for non-humanoids than in that miserable half-hour spent dragging himself to his doom.

It’s almost pathetic, how the sight of the shabby cell the soldier unceremoniously shows him fills Hux with joy. He all but collapses on the small cot, lying on his side. Footsteps fade into the distance and he’s left in the dark, alone with his physical pain and mental anguish.

*

He rubs at the small swell of his stomach, wondering about what would happen to the remains of the efficiently brutal war machine he helmed, and trying not to think about its failure. His failure. Supreme Leader’s last orders were left unfulfilled, and Kylo Ren had been left there in the snow, in the snow-white pus of a dying planet, bested by a small desert rat of a scavenger. Perhaps the Knight would be better off dead, what with his reputation completely ruined and Hux captured, their unborn child’s fate uncertain. _Inevitable_ , he mentally corrects himself. The Resistance, as kind as they make themselves out to be, will be truly foolish not to terminate the last few scraps of their enemies.

An involuntary spasm wracks his body, and Hux bites down on his lower lip to keep from screaming. Perhaps they won’t need to- it seems that he’s capable of doing so on his own. Hesitantly, he unbuckles his belt and slips a hand down the trousers. There’s a faint metallic tang that greets his nose, and his fingers emerge slippery with viscous liquid.

He’s known it all along, ever since the burning sensation started deep within him, but the sudden realization, confirmation of the imminent loss of his child strikes him with the force of an ion canon, and suddenly, a sob escapes him, then another. More blood pools out between his legs, and Hux removes the trousers in a sorry attempt to mop it up. It’s no use- he’s blacking out, vision going fuzzy at the edges even as pain makes everything go white, and mercifully, nothingness claims him.

*

Leia awakes to the sound of her comlink beeping insistently, and she’s up on her feet and mashing the door button open, while trying to decipher what the clearly hyperventilating person on the other end is saying. It’s barely five in the morning, which is nothing good, and the fact that this person has access to her private channel makes the unknown news even more foreboding. The one thing she can get out of him, though, is to get the kriff into cell block E and deal with their newest prisoner.

Bleary-eyed prisoners glare at her noisy entry resentfully, as Leia practically sprints to the level marked for solitary confinement. The morning patrol, a young Rodian, sags with relief when she comes into view, his enormous eyes inexplicably managing to widen even more. Leia skims his mind for what happened, too impatient to try to pry information out of him, and gasps audibly. She forces open the cell door before squeamishness can prevail over bravery, and the sight is somehow worse that what she’d braced herself for.

Hux is keeled over in a pool of gore, crimson staining his naked thighs and buttocks. His eyes are shut, and for a singularly horrifying moment, Leia suspects the worst, but the barely perceptible rise and fall of his gaunt chest provides cold comfort. Rushing over to his side, and hardly aware of the dampness seeping into her pants, she presses a hand to his abdomen, and pulls back as if burned.

“Get the med-kit,” she shouts at the Rodian, who is still gaping dumbly at the scene. Grunting with frustration, Leia intones at him, “You will get the med-kit,” and finally he springs into action far too slowly for her liking. Hux is hemorrhaging, has been bleeding out for Force knows how many hours, and why the hell this is happening, she’d find out later. Right now, even if the sweaty, flushed face and broken body below her belongs to one of her worst enemies, Leia knows the importance of acting first and regretting later. She gets to work quickly, pausing only to buzz the med-bay for help, as the man is in too fragile a condition to send over there.

Hours later, when warm hands guide her over to a large, comfortable armchair and wraps her blood-stained fingers around steaming hot drink laced with Corellian brandy, Leia has the presence of mind to finally reason her way to the awful conclusion, though regrettably, none of the energy. Her head slumps lower and lower in the overstuffed chair, long silvery-chestnut hair coming loose from its braid, and CP-30 fusses over his princess, placing a blanket over her and taking away the empty mug.

*

Tired blue eyes snap open and close almost immediately after. On the other side of the two-way mirror, Leia takes note that the former General is awake.

It has been two weeks since Medical discharged him from the med-bay, and five since he emerged from the operating theatre. Hux is none the worse for wear, though noticeably thinner, the medical gown he wears accentuating an already gaunt frame. The IV drips snake from fat bags of nutrient fluid and antibiotics into ports discreetly implanted into bony arms, the tubes running with clear liquid or thick sludge. He looks like an otherworldly creature acclimating to a new atmosphere, but he’s alive.

“Hux,” Leia whispers into the speaker, quietly so not to disturb his rest, but loud enough to let him know. The man turns his head quickly to the side, mussed red hair making him look strangely human. He sees the small comlink on the side of his bed, then hesitates a little before grabbing it.

“Organa,” he replies coolly. However, his body language betrays the casualness of his tone, thin hands clenching and unclenching around the sheets. For a few hopeful seconds, Leia wonders if she should wait before breaking the news, but he will have to hear it sooner or later, and she would rather be the one who deals with the fallout.

“You had a miscarriage,” she says, as gently as she can, though the crackly sound system masks all emotion.

Hux doesn’t reply, electing instead to slowly lean back against the thin pillow, and turning away from the mirror. One doesn’t need the Force to know how he is feeling. She doesn’t stay too long after that, and leaves shortly.

There’s another way to secretly observe him, though, and one that she hopes will evade his gaze- a hidden camera sneakily positioned above a cupboard. Leia finds herself mesmerized by the tiny droplets of liquid beading on nigh invisible eyelashes, by the miniscule heaves of bony shoulders, by the breaking of this cold, cruel man that is Starkiller’s destruction on the basest level, the implosion taking place in slow motion but just as inevitable.

Hux is crying for the first time in decades.

A strange guilt weighs lightly on her conscience, sorrow interlaced with the thrill of voyeurism. Leia shuts off the cam feed and attempts to concentrate on planning out supply routes and reconnaissance missions, but her mind wanders. There are more questions than answers running furiously through her thoughts, but nobody to discuss either with. Hux is a high-level prisoner, whose capture and location is known only to those with the highest security clearance, and of course, the pink soldier who’d stunned him. No matter how badly she needs somebody to confide in, nobody becomes General by being generous with their secrets. Dameron, arguably her most trusted Resistance member, is away on a mission, while Rey is still training on Ahch-To with her brother.

*

She’s wrong, though. The frantic pulse of her racing thoughts are broadcast faintly through the Force, and those who can, can’t help but listen in. Some are seized by a sense of panic for all of three seconds, while others with better sensitivity pick up words, fragments of phrases, or even whole sentences. None receive the whole puzzle, though. Leia’s mind is lightly shielded, and vital clues are censored out, save for a few stray thought patterns.

[ _burning shame bitter regret the crushing weight of sadness_ ]

[ _there was so much red_ ]

[ _grandchild_ ]

In the darkened throne room of his citadel, Snoke’s inhuman face twists itself into a ghastly smile. Beckoning to the bluish, kneeling figure before him, the details of the Knight’s latest mission are silently communicated faster than the speed of light.

Kylo Ren inhales sharply, his fingers unconsciously brushing against his lightsaber, yearning to active those three prongs of crimson death. He knows better than to give in to violent desires when paying respect to his master, though, and simply bows his head in submission before taking his leave.

Snoke represses the urge to cackle maniacally. The plan is going along beautifully- unleashing his mentally unstable, angry, _grieving_ apprentice onto the unsuspecting Resistance will be akin to leading nerfs to slaughter.

The Force sighs, then dissipates.


End file.
